"For this year, the drought is in place and it ain't getting any better. It's staying the same or getting worse," Chuck Maxwell, National Weather Service

The fire potential forecast for a chunk of New Mexico, including Ruidoso, looks above normal for late spring, and drought is one of the major drivers, a briefing through the Southwest Coordination Center of the National Weather Service indicates.

"We saw substantial drought-influenced fire behavior with the massive fires (last year) in east central Arizona and the south half of New Mexico," said Chuck Maxwell, lead forecaster of Predictive Services for the Center. "For this year, the drought is in place and it ain't getting any better. It's staying the same or getting worse."

The timing for the fire season is uncertain with two competing storm patterns over the region, "But when it does happen, it's going to be a two week deal and we're going to be into big fires, no doubt about that." Whichever weather pattern prevails, New Mexico tends to stay dry, he said.

Maxwell said drought is one of five major factors he looked at this year in coming up with a forecast on the severity of the fire season.

"Using this approach validated very well large fire activity over past couple of years," he said. "It was a change for us. We used to look for a big driver every year. That tended to drive all of our thinking. We had to realized we were overlooking stuff that could pop up later in the season and we hadn't told anybody about them."

Drought was the first factor, because of its huge impact on soil and fuel moisture especially in heavy fuels areas.

"We're in a long-term drought and that doesn't help out the situation, especially in heavy and live fuels," Maxwell said.

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"We will have an especially volatile situation with higher than normal severity across the entire region. The focus is on heavier fuels, mountains and forests especially."

Because of the drought, not as much grass has grown in areas of Texas and New Mexico, eliminating those fine fuels for wildfires, Maxwell said of his second factor.

"Fine fuels are important, because in east central New Mexico and west Texas, that's all you've got for fuel - grass and forbs. And if none have grown, there's no fire potential," he said. "So we track where it's been raining, where grass is growing, how tall it is, whether it's green or dead. What we're seeing this year is a distinct lack of grass across a good chunk of New Mexico and western Texas. If you go west of the Continental Divide, where they actually had a monsoon last year, they have a lot more carryover grass and have seen green growth this year. So there is more grassy fuels in the western half of the Southwest as opposed to across the east."

In areas where some big snow events occurred, "Grass could emerge and totally whack our whole outlook," he said, but not likely in New Mexico.

Maxwell looked at seasonal temperatures and precipitation as a third factor.

The weather was more consistently cool and dry than average, pointing to a more severe fire season.

"Last year was fairly cool, one of colder we've seen in a decade," Maxwell said. "But the moisture across New Mexico was pretty darn poor, way below normal in many places. We had a couple of bouts of moisture in some places, but it really didn't do much for us."

The snowpack already "is terrible, probably about half of average," he said. "We're seeing way below normal (in New Mexico). That does not bode well."

Predicting how spring weather will affect summer fire conditions is tough this year, because of the possibility of two competing weather patterns and a "highly variable and dynamic spring," Maxwell said of the fourth factor. "One thing we're not seeing here, we're not seeing the big names," he said. "People like to blame (the weather) on La Ni-a or El Ni-o, but it's nothing this year, La Nada. What were looking at is kind of a pattern driven approach using meteorology, climatology and past years."

Signals for the coming spring point to a major west coast trough developing that would flip conditions back to cool for the West, maybe even New Mexico. "At the same time, it's pretty darn dry," he said. "We may get a bout or two of moisture, but they won't be a drought buster. We're not seeing anything that is going to change our big picture going into fire season with spring time. One caveat is if we get two or three feet of snow some places, that would certainly change the game and be very helpful."

The northern track would swirl north of Four Corners and end up blasting New Mexico with wind. Temperatures would be cool, maybe some snow in the mountains, but general conditions would be dry. The other track cuts south and brings more moisture into the region, but those impacts would be felt mainly in Arizona, he said. "It seems like New Mexico is a pretty good barrier to precipitation this year either way," Maxwell said. "(The second track) might delay the season and maybe take the edge off the fire season, but will not drastically change it."

When the two weather pattern options are opposite, "it certainly makes the forecast a little more complex," he said. "We're seeing a highly variable and dynamic spring. As dynamic as it tends to be in New Mexico, this is even more so."

As for the summer monsoon, the fifth factor, Maxwell said there is no signal on which to give any information. The rainy season could start early or later.

"The sooner it heats up in the Southwest and the winds stop, the sooner the monsoon can start to develop," he said. "The sooner we lose the storm tracks out of the Southwest, the better off we may be in the big picture. That's all we have."

When he overlays a potential fire outlook map with the other four factors, a swatch down the middle that includes southwestern Lincoln County is red for above normal by May into June.

"The impacts are almost area wide and not getting better," he said. The seasonal temperature and precipitation were consistently cool and dry. The weather pattern features two scenarios and under either, New Mexico tends to stay on the dry and windier side, he said.

"Northern Arizona will see some substantial moisture impacts in the next few weeks," he said. "I can only hope the same is true in northern New Mexico. We've been foreseeing through April enough storm pattern to take the edge off," he said. "But as that translates into May and June, (fire conditions) will escalate rapidly, because of the drought and low soil moisture."